Since the NBA lockout began, several different groups of people were blamed for the problem. Negotiating occurred for two years and a deal is finally done, but the damage is also.

NBA commissioner David Stern said that 22 of the league’s 30 teams are expected to lose a combined $340 million this season, according to guardian.com. The season will now be a 66-game season starting on Dec. 25 after the league and players negotiated for 15 hours to announce the lockout was over after 149 days.

The owners wanted a 50/50 split for all of the profits, but the players rejected the idea because they believed the owners would be making too much of the money. All of this was fought over about a 3 or 4 percent difference in revenues.

The NFL, which has 1,696 players plus 32 owners had to come to an agreement and they managed to do so this summer without missing any games. If the NFL could have come up with a decision before it cut into games, why couldn’t the NBA do the same when they have less players?

The players have been making millions, and most were not affected by the three month loss of revenue.

The owners may be losing money this season, but they will be entirely fine holding off a few months without revenue coming in.

The fans aren’t the victims either, since the NBA reached an agreement and they will be able to watch the games once again. Even if they don’t want to watch the NBA, they can watch college teams, which is often more exciting anyway.

The true victims of the NBA lockout are the business owners who operate near the franchises and depend on these games for business. Merchandise revenue will be dropping significantly, which hurts the shop owners tremendously. The people that work for the arenas lost three months of work and many had to look elsewhere when the paychecks stopped coming in.

It will be those who make a living from the NBA and who have never complained about wanting a greater share of the revenue that will need to find a way to replace millions of dollars in revenue.

The average salary in the NBA in 2010-11 was $5.15 million. It would take the average American worker more than 123 years to earn what the average player in the NBA makes playing one season of basketball, according to sports.com.

Though the teams will be back in business soon enough, most of them businesses lost three months of business in that time that can not be made up.

The NBA owners and players will smile and shake hands at the deal they have made, but all these people have been out of jobs while the millionaire owners argued with millionaire players, forgetting about the people that they would hurt.